Never before has it become so clear that we live in societies that are politically
democratic but socially fascist. The Podemos wave is a metaphor for every
single attempt to find a progressive solution.

The Indian Home Ministry’s attempt to block
the screening could be seen as one example of a broader clampdown on whatever is deemed ‘anti-national’. But what does that say about the mainstream culture?

There was uproar in India at the
brutal gang rape of a 23 year old student on her way home from the cinema. Can
we harness the international attention to this case to demand that the world's
leaders commit themselves to a policy of zero tolerance of violence against
women ?

India needs to go through with eliminating
section 309 of its penal code, punishing attempted suicide, as announced by the
government at the end of 2014. The criminalisation of suicide is often used to suppress peaceful hunger strikes.

Dalit
literature has emerged as a powerful force against the exploitation of lower
castes in India. But the revolutionary transformation that it seeks to enact
can only occur through a plurality of voices, engaged in meaningful dialogue.

It is these solidarities, across factory and across contract,
which the factories and indeed Modi’s Government fear, which must not be
forgotten once the dust settles over the current round of labour 'reforms'.

Some of the biggest corrupt
operations are run by governments themselves, and watchdog bodies often lack
sufficient power to challenge entrenched problems. There’s another powerful
approach: popular action, as documented in Shaazka Beyerle’s new book Curtailing
Corruption.Review.

There is
undeniably a great difference in cultural values between Tibetan Buddhists who
grew up within their community in India and the western converts who were
raised with liberal western values. But this is no longer the end of the story.

Al-Qaida's aging leaders are struggling to
compete for recruits with Islamic State. Nevertheless, India must prepare
itself for all sorts of terrorist threats, not least terrorist re-emergence in
Afghanistan. What role might NATO play in this?

Could Delhi be solving
the wrong problem? What it chooses to define as a law and order problem is
essentially a governance crisis of severe proportions and one that the Indian
state is not yet willing to acknowledge.

The governance process seems to be running smoothly. Modi’s public announcement on corruption “Na khaunga na khane dunga’ (Neither would I pocket money illegally nor allow others to do it) is laudable, though only time will prove if he walks his talk.

The knee jerk reaction from India’s intellectuals to the advent of a new
government has been to profess a concern for ‘liberal order’. But we need to
think about the space for dissent and divergent opinion in more nuanced ways.

India has moderated its position on the
Israel-Palestine conflict over time, exchanging statements of condemnation for
those “expressing concern”. But behind India’s strategic balancing act there also
lies a precise domestic calculus.

With
a new government in Delhi, India’s urban agenda is now focused on the creation
of “Smart Cities” in industrial corridors. Such an initiative is driven by the demand of foreign investors to find sanitized spaces
in developing countries in which they can operate easily – unhampered by
politics.

In 2013, openDemocracy published Pradeep
Baisakh’s interview with Arvind Kejriwal, charting his transition from Gandhian
social activist to politician. One year on, Baisakh writes an open letter to the
leader of the Aam Admi party, urging him to once again take up Gandhian
principles.

This statutory nature of the Sharia begins
to emerge, paradoxically, in the colonial British courts. It is this legacy that led to a
reimagining of the role of Sharia, that now plagues the modern Muslim nation
state.